"Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of terrorists."
No, they wouldn't fall into their hands. They'd have to come and pick them up. Maybe slapping some "team lift" stickers on the nuclear materials will serve as a deterrent. That stuff's heavy. "Revealed: Jihadis thrice attacked Pakistan nuclear sites," by Chidanand Rajghatta for the Times News Network, August 11:
WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts.
The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007; an attack on a nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007; and perhaps most significantly, the August 20, 2008 attack when Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly.
These attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken steps to secure its nuclear arsenal against potential attacks, particularly by the US and India, says Gregory.
In fact, the attacks have received so little attention that Peter Bergen, the eminent terrorism expert who reviewed Gregory’s paper, first published in West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center Sentinel, said “he (Gregory) points out something that was news to me (and shouldn’t have been) which is that a series of attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities have already happened.”
Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of terrorists. But Gregory, while detailing the steps Islamabad has taken to protect them against Indian and US attacks, asks if the geographical location of Pakistan’s principal nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks.
Gregory points out that when Pakistan was developing its nuclear weapons infrastructure in the 1970s and 1980s, its principal concern was the risk that India would overrun its nuclear weapons facilities in an armored offensive if the facilities were placed close to the Pakistan-India border. As a result, Pakistan, with a few exceptions, chose to locate much of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to the north and west of the country and to the region around Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Re-posting what I (dumbledoresarmy) kept of the original comments, as made during the final disastrous days of our sojourn at IntenseDebate.
MUHAMMADBEAR said - Commenting on "Report: Jihadists have attacked Pakistan's nuclear facilities three times"
"But Gregory ... asks if the geographical location of Pakistan’s principal nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks."
Oh, you think!
HEATSKETCH said - Pakistan having nukes is bad enough. This is like America backing the the crips in their war with the bloods.
PULSAR said - " Islamabad and Rawalpindi.""
Now there's a couple places sane people would want to store nuclear weapons....Right?...
EASTVIEW said - Comment on: "Report: Jihadists have attacked Pakistan's nuclear facilities three times"
This is frightening. Even though they have not been successful to date, if nothing else these people are single mindedly persistent. Soon or later, after the fourth, or tenth, or fiftieth attempt, they'll be successful. No matter how many unsuccessful attempts have been made, it only takes one success for the nukes to fall into the hands of the Jihadists. What then?
Remember, the Muslims made twenty-two unsuccessful tries, over a period of eight-hundred years, to conquer Constantinople. In 1453, on their twenty-third attempt, they were successful, bringing an end to the Byzantine Empire.
The United States of America has only been in existence for 233 years, and the Muslims have only recently, within the past few decades, started to turn their attention to us.
How does one deal with a mindset that thinks of eight-hundred years as being an acceptable time span to wait for victory, as they did with Constantinople?
Eight-hundred years from now is the year 2809. Do you think the West can even hold on that long?
Logic dictates that there is only one solution to avoid the fate of, not only Constantinople, but the crescent of land from Gibralter to Delhi.
And that is to eradicate completely, once and for all time, the virus that has infected the world for the last 1,350 years.
-DUMBLEDORESARMY told EASTVIEW - Two things to bear in mind. First: the Jews and the Spaniards and the Greeks and the Bulgarians just refused to lie down and die; they answered the Mohammedan scourge by refusing to disappear, and refusing to be absorbed, and in the end, they *did* get some of their territory back.
We should look particularly at the persistence the Spanish - look up 'Pelayo' - and the Greeks exhibited: it took *centuries*.
Second: re. your final paragraph. You may like to reflect upon the words of, of all people, Gustave Flaubert, he who is most famously known for Madame Bovary:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024978.php#idc...
"I demand, in the name of humanity, that the Black Stone be crushed, so that its dust scatters in the wind, that Mecca be destroyed, and that the tomb of Mohammed be dishonored. This is the way to discourage fanaticism."
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Letter to Madame Roger des Genettes,
12th or 19th January 1878
Cited by Sagunto on Monday 23rd February 2009 at jihadwatch, in discussion of thread: ‘The bulletin of Christian Persecution’.
JOCKAIRA said - 'Comment on: "Report: Jihadists have attacked Pakistan's nuclear facilities three times"
(quoting) "...asks if the geographical location of Pakistan’s principal nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks."
You Betcha!...Do you really think the Talibombers don't know where those nukes are...even if the US doesn't? Do you think having them in the Talihood isn't a great temptation?
Don't you think having them there makes it a lot easier to get to them...it's not like they have to go a couple of hundred miles out of their way. And...this very convenient location would permit the Taliraiders to build up a sufficient attack force quietly over a period of a few hours or days.
Get 'em out while you can...Dhimmie Dummies!!'
END OF MY RECORD OF ORIGINAL COMMENTS.
Memo to regular jihadwatch posters and lurkers who have been with us from February to August 2009, while we were using IntenseDebate for comments; and who witnessed the mid-August 'meltdown' on IntenseDebate, which sent us scurrying back to Typepad:
I will be spending such spare time as I (dumbledoresarmy) have, re-posting, in the appropriate places, whatever I preserved of the comments to the various articles. I usually do keep quite a few (though not necessarily all) of such comments as are made.
During this period - Feb - Aug 2009- many excellent comments and pieces of analysis were made both by regulars and newcomers.